Microsoft’s search business is no longer simply a loss leader and has been taking real market share, both in USA and around the world.

For this quarter the search business has seen positive growth of 10% YoY (11% in constant currency). This is 2% higher than the 8% growth of last quarter, suggesting positive momentum for the division.

This has been due to both a greater volume of searches and also increased revenue per search, suggesting smart advertisers are finally seeing the value to a relatively untapped and more well off than average market of consumers.

Microsoft has previously said that Bing-using households generally had higher incomes and that more Bing users clicked on ads that from other search engines, both of course which is good news for advertisers.